There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was no out of the question. (from the first line)

From the Publisher:Growing up in the home of a cruel aunt and a harsh charity school, Jane Eyre, an orphaned young woman, accepts employment as a governess at Thornfield Hall and soon finds herself in love with her employer, the enigmatic Rochester. Reprint. 17,500 first printing.

Annotation:Charlotte Bront's first novel, published in 1847, was based in part on the author's own days in a brutal boarding school where two of her sisters died of tuberculosis; her characterization of the place in her first published work was an act of revenge. The novel's heroine is a plain, impoverished, but spirited young governess who not only wins the heart of her employer--the jaded, Byronic Mr. Rochester--but manages to defy the social conventions of her time to become a strong and fulfilled adult. Told by Jane herself as she looks back over her life, JANE EYRE became the prototype for the classic Gothic novel set in a wild, windswept location where a nave heroine must cope with ghosts and the supernatural. It has also inspired countless romance novels and created the bitter, brooding hero who is brought back to life by the goodness and innocence of the woman who loves him. Bront's tale, however, transcends the genres it inspired. Jane's search for love and for meaning also includes a refusal to accept less than she feels is her due. Bront sees that quest as a moral one, and a critical exploration of the paradoxes of the English class system and of Victorian gender relations is an integral part of the book. But the main reason for its position as an enduring classic is that JANE EYRE is a stirring and satisfying tale, a page-turner. It was a bestseller in its day and remains popular today--the quintessential coming-of-age story that still has resonance for young women who are struggling to find the balance between romantic love and personal freedom.

Author Bio

Charlotte Bronte

Best known for her Gothic masterpiece JANE EYRE, Charlotte Bronte grew up in Yorkshire, England with her literary sisters, Anne and Emily, and her brother Branwell. Their childhood at the Haworth parsonage (where their father was the parson) was marked by imaginative play--stagings of dramas, stories, and other creative work, often using a set of wooden soldiers. In THE PROFESSOR, she draws on her painful experiences in Brussels, where she experienced unrequited love for her employer. A shy, solitary woman who longed for love, Bronte married late in life and died in childbirth.

Praise

O (The Oprah Magazine)"Talk about respect for the feminine! Which, it turns out, is simply respect for the soul. That this author was sent by Providence...to show me the difference between convention and morality, I count as one of the great blessings of a blessed life." - Alice Walker November 2000

Book Jacket"...the masterwork of a great genius." - William Makepeace Thackeray

(unknown)"At the conclusion of 'Jane Eyre' we do not feel so much that we have read a book, as that we have parted from a most singular and eloquent woman, met by chance upon a Yorkshire hill, who has gone with us for a time and told us the whole of her life history." - Virginia Woolf

Introduction"Reader, if you have yet to discover the unique voice of Charlotte Bront?'s 'Jane Eyre', you have a splendid delight awaiting you...Like 'Villette', 'Jane Eyre' is a story of hunger; unlike that more complex, and perhaps more aesthetically pure novel, it is a story of hunger satisfied...'Jane Eyre' is remarkable for its forthright declaration of its heroine's passions and appetites...She is ravenous with appetite. - Joyce Carol Oates

essay"So we open 'Jane Eyre'....The writer has us by the hand, forces us along her road, makes us see what she sees, never leaves us for a moment or allows us to forget her. At the end we are steeped through and through with the genius, the vehemence, the indignation of Charlotte Bront?....It is the red and fitful glow of the heart's fire which illumines her page." - Virginia Woolf

Salon"The most immediate surprise of 'Jane Eyre' for today's readers is the directness, even bluntness, of the young heroine's voice. Here is no prissy little-girl sensibility, but a startlingly independent, even skeptical perspective....Another surprise of 'Jane Eyre' is the seemingly 'real--that is, non-romantic--nature of the lovers-to-be....Why does 'Jane Eyre' retain its appeal after so many decades, and so many intervening novels of virginal young heroines, Byronic moody mysterious elder men, and melodramatic disclosures? One answer is, simply, the quality of Jane's and Rochester's characters. They are believable. They are intelligent, yet emotional, superior beings who are human, even flawed; as the 19th-century reader would have discerned, they are models for us all." - Joyce Carol Oates 09/29/1997

Introduction"The suggestive use of language and the magical quality of her writing, which distinguishes Charlotte Bront? equally from her predecessor Jane Austen and her successor George Eliot, is one of the characteristic aspects of her work...Charlotte Bront?, no less than her sister Emily, was a splendidly original artist." - Q.D. Leavis